Why does it burn like hell if you touch your eye while trimming?

[NorCalFor20]

I was doing some trimming today, had a nice layer of oil on my fingers from handling flowers and had an itch in my eye, so i rubbed and then I felt like my eyeballs had acid poured on them, it seriously reminded me of the time i got anti bacterial soap in my eye when i was a kid. Pretty much as painful as it gets. Weird thing is, I don't use any sprays or pesticides so what caused it?

 

[FtWendy]

The oils are hydrophobic... it kind of 'dries' the eyeball by pushing the moisture away.

 

[Coconutz]

You could probably get seriously baked by absorbing thc directly into the retina.
Anyway... The crystals are the plants defense weapon homie.
Keep the plant out of your eyeballs bro

THC is one of many cannabinoids found in the cannabis plant. Most of the THC is concentrated in stalked capitate trichomes. Trichomes are glandular hairs found on many plants and are found in several types on the plant. It is likely that such hairs deter predators by irritating the mouths of herbivores that would attempt to eat the plant. Glandular hairs like cannabis trichomes may also help the plant in cold or windy conditions, protecting the plant surfaces from frost and drying out. When a glandular trichome is ruptured, its sticky resins leak out, serving to capture tiny insect predators. The psychoactive element of the glands may also deter predators. Many of the cannabinoids contained in cannabis are antibiotic, protecting the plants from disease. The stickiness of these resinous glands help attract and retain pollen thus aiding in the plant's reproduction. Unpollinated female plants produce more and more trichomes in an effort to catch pollen, thus producing more THC than pollinated seed bearing plants. So while not a "poison" per se, THC and other cannabinoids act as predator and bacteriological deterrents, offer protection from the elements, and aid in the reproduction of the plant.

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

It is the terpenes.
-SamS

 

[Rambro]

ive also heard of a few people breaking out in hives after having a lot of skin on bud contact while in their grow rooms. and when i smoke fresh buds that are just recently dried and not yet cured it always makes me sneeze a couple times. im guessing the oils and shit in the plants arent good for the body until its had a chance to dry/cure and transform a bit. but then again im just a pothead and not a scientist so i wouldnt listen to me if i were you lol

 

[Green lung]

Defense mechanism by the plant

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

The stickiness of these resinous glands help attract and retain pollen thus aiding in the plant's reproduction. Unpollinated female plants produce more and more trichomes in an effort to catch pollen, thus producing more THC than pollinated seed bearing plants.

Pollen needs to be captured by the styles/stigmas of female flowers if it is to create seeds. A pollen grain stuck in the resin of a trichome has as much chance of fertilizing an ovum as does a sperm that has soaked into a bedsheet.

 

[Wiggs Dannyboy]

Pollen needs to be captured by the styles/stigmas of female flowers if it is to create seeds. A pollen grain stuck in the resin of a trichome has as much chance of fertilizing an ovum as does a sperm that has soaked into a bedsheet.

Good analogy Crusader! But, a question did arise in my mind...mother nature/evolution rarely makes such a gargantuan faux pas in the sexual reproduction world as to include something that inhibits the act of reproduction. The stickyness factor does seem to be a monkey wrench in the plants ability to get pollen to the stamen. What the hell is going on here? Is there possibly something else at work that would be counter-intuitive?

 

[LEF]

never happened, good to know

one stupid thing I did, was, handling those small chilli peppers (rubbing them between my hands to get rid of the seeds)

and then touching my eyes
be careful

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

...mother nature/evolution rarely makes such a gargantuan faux pas in the sexual reproduction world as to include something that inhibits the act of reproduction. The stickyness factor does seem to be a monkey wrench in the plants ability to get pollen to the stamen. What the hell is going on here? Is there possibly something else at work that would be counter-intuitive?

Stamen is the male flower part that produces pollen. In a female flower the style is the extension of the pistil which terminates in a stigma which accepts pollen. With cannabis though the styles are two parted and somewhat branched to make little fuzzy filaments which filter pollen out of the air like a spider web. Not sure where to categorize which portion would be the stigma, but that is beside the point.

Trichomes contain resin within spherical capsules. There needs to be some force to break that thin skin and expose the resin. The impact of pollen grains blowing in the wind isn't going to rupture trichome heads.

Also, fertilization is only one factor in successful reproduction. The resinous trichomes protect the flowers and their seeds from predation. So there's a trade off. If any pollen does stick to resin instead of bouncing off on its way to a female flower's filament, that loss is more than compensated for by the fact that the flower and its seeds are less likely to get munched. And male gametes are cheap and plentiful.

I don't think that birds would be spreading many cannabis seeds since the seeds aren't swallowed whole as with berries. Birds crack hemp seeds, eat the innards and discard the shells.

We aren't talking about Gorilla Glue here either.

 

[Coconutz]

I was thinking more about the trichomes on the pistils.
When those pistils recede they would carry the pollen into the organs of the plant?
Not sure if they start to recede too late for that to be a natural explanation?

 

[supermanlives]

admit it you were crying man. tears of joy at harvest

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

I was thinking more about the trichomes on the pistils.
When those pistils recede they would carry the pollen into the organs of the plant?
Not sure if they start to recede too late for that to be a natural explanation?

from Wikipedia

What happens after pollination is fertilisation. In plants it is a double fertilisation in which two sperm cells fertilize cells in the plant ovary. One of these is a normal fertilisation, which produces the embryo. The other is a unique kind of fertilsation which produces the seed endosperm.
The process begins when a pollen grain sticks to the stigma of the pistil (female reproductive structure). Then it germinates, and grows a long pollen tube. While this pollen tube is growing, a haploid cell travels down the tube behind the tube nucleus. This cell divides by mitosis into two haploid sperm cells.
As the pollen tube grows, it makes its way from the stigma, down the style and into the ovary. Here the pollen tube reaches the ovule and releases its contents (which include the sperm cells). One sperm makes its way to fertilize the egg cell, producing a diploid (2n) zygote. The second sperm cell fuses with two cell nuclei, producing a triploid (3n) cell.
As the zygote develops into an embryo, the triploid cell develops into the endosperm, which serves as the embryo's food supply. The ovary now will develop into a fruit and the ovule will develop into a seed.

 

[Coconutz]

So from that it does sound like the pollen by the trichomes on the pistils will pollinate the plant.
I highly doubt mother nature would produce them, only to allow them to hinder the reproduction of the species.

 

[bobblehead]

Trichs grow on pistils? News to me... Seems to me trichs and pistils are from 2 completely different systems. Maybe get a biology book and a microscope.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/461837/pistil#md-media-strip-tab-image-content

 

[Coconutz]

http://www.cannaversity.com/cannaversity/article.php?id=035

I dont know how good your eyesight is, but heres a close up online. Its kind of blurry, but still easy enough to make out that the pistils are covered in trichome stalks

https://cannabis.community.forums.o...1212-when-do-you-start-your-count-down/page-3

At the bottom of this page is a real good shot...

 

[bobblehead]

Lol I'm not the one that needs to take a better look buddy... Those hairs on the pistil are meant to collect pollen, but they aren't trichomes. If they were, they would have heads like the trichs you see on the calyx in that same picture.

 

[Coconutz]

They are called cystolith hairs. They are to catch the pollen. They look like stalks and contain no thc.
I didnt know that before since they arent mentioned much at all.